January 06, 2010 -- For the past 23 years, Marilyn Citron of Mystic has played the same set of numbers in the CT Lottery’s Classic Lotto game. And, on New Year’s Day 2010, Ms. Citron’s purchase paid off when the numbers on her ticket, 01-06-08-12-14-35 were drawn that night, making her the CT Lottery’s First Millionaire of the year, and winner of a Classic Lotto Jackpot worth $9.7 million.

As a long-time player, Ms. Citron generally checks the Friday winning Lottery numbers on Saturday morning, but due to the busy holiday and a driveway that needed to be shoveled, she didn’t have a chance to check until late Saturday afternoon. Thinking there must be a typo, Citron logged on to the CT Lottery’s website, which confirmed that she was indeed the only winner of the Classic Lotto Jackpot.

After contacting her son, her lawyer, and financial advisor that day, Citron endured the two days until Monday morning when she arrived at the CT Lottery Headquarters in Rocky Hill to claim her prize. Citron opted to take the one-time cash lump sum payment of $5,830,667 (pre-taxes).

Citron, who works as a communications and business manager for a major Southeastern Connecticut pharmaceutical company, had been planning on taking on a part-time job after her retirement in March. While she will continue to stay on at her job until her retirement date, her Lottery winnings will allow her to forgo the need for a part-time job search after retiring, and will allow her to devote time to volunteer work with a focus on helping animals, which are her passion. The only major new purchases Citron plans on making are new cars to replace the old ones she and her son currently own. Citron plans on donating the two older cars to those who are in need of transportation.

“I live a fairly modest life, this will allow me to do more traveling and share this abundance with family and friends, because in the end, it’s only money,” Citron said. “While I don’t see my life changing that much, this will make it easier.”

While Citron’s winning jackpot ticket was the only one sold for the January 1st Classic Lotto drawing, there were also 12,697 additional winning tickets in that draw, winning prizes ranging from $2 to $1,386 each.

Citron purchased her winning ticket using the CT Lottery’s “Advance Action” feature which allows a player to purchase game tickets up to 26 drawings in advance. After her win, Citron still has eight drawings to go on her current ticket. She plans on continuing to play regularly using the same numbers because “you never know.”

The Henny Penny Convenience Store located at 2 Roosevelt Avenue in Mystic will receive a bonus of $10,000 awarded to retailers in good standing that sell Classic Lotto jackpot tickets.